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A fintech company called Slash offers business banking accounts tailored to the needs of specific kinds of entrepreneurs. Slash provides business checking accounts with funds held at FDIC-insured banks, detailed spending analytics dashboards, free or low-cost wire and ACH transfers, easy access to lending options, and unlimited virtual cards. These cards can be configured with specific spending limits, merchants, and merchant categories to prevent unauthorized or erroneous employee purchases. That control, along with metadata from Slashs integrations with popular accounting platforms, makes it easier for bookkeepers to classify transactions. The company also offers a range of add-ons built for particular industriessomething like an app store for bankingdesigned to address the unique pain points of different types of businesses. The insight behind Slash is the work that an accountant [does] at a construction company, or a marketing agency, or a property manager looks very, very different from one another, says CEO Victor Cardenas. Marketing agencies, for example, often take money from clients to spend on platforms like Google and Facebook. Traditionally, they would use a single business checking account and rely on internal systems to track how much was received, how much had been spent, and when to request more funds. With Slash, agencies can create virtual accounts for each client, allowing both parties to see the remaining balance. They can even trigger automatic billing for more marketing fundsplus the agency feewhen the balance runs low. The approach is popular: Slash reports that more than 1% of global ad spending on Facebook is conducted using a Slash card. We basically make it much easier for agencies to put their accounts receivable on autopilot, Cardenas says. Other industries have their own challenges. Contractors in fields like plumbing or HVAC often give technicians credit cards for fueling up, but want to prevent personal purchaseseven inside gas stations. Slash enables businesses to restrict cards to fuel purchases only and ties each transaction to a specific driver or vehicle. We can make it so an owner can basically say, I want this card to only be able to be used to buy gas at the pump and not inside of the station, Cardenas says. And then we get data at the time of clearing of the transaction around the actual fuel grade, what the kind of fuel was, and were able to pass that on and show that to our customers. Other users include online travel agents, who generate virtual cards to pay hotels and vendors. For businesses dealing with cryptocurrency, Slash enables sending and receiving stablecoin paymentswithout needing a separate crypto platform. Slash also offers an API that lets customers build custom dashboards, trigger payments through internal systems, or, in the case of e-commerce marketplaces, automatically transfer funds to vendors when goods are sold. Cardenas says the rise of AI-powered coding tools has allowed Slash to rapidly release features tailored to different industries. The company started in 2021 with a focus on sole proprietors, but pivoted in late 2023 to serve larger businesses in specific verticals. On Tuesday, it announced a $41 million Series B funding round, valuing the company at $370 million. Thanks to AI, Slash can now ship features at a pace that would have been difficult just a few years ago, while leveraging its existing banking infrastructure and relationships. Its becoming trivial to build software, but its not trivial to stand up a card issuing and banking program, Cardenas says. And so while were ahead, we want to build solutions for as many industries as quickly as possible.
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E-Commerce
A humanoid robotics startup co-founded by prominent artificial-intelligence futurist Ray Kurzweil said on Tuesday that venture capital firm Gauntlet Ventures will back its $100 million Series B funding round. The company, Beyond Imagination, will be valued at $500 million, and venture capital firm Gauntlet Ventures will be the round’s sole investor. Kurzweil is known for popularizing the term “the singularity,” when he predicted two decades ago that by 2045, artificial intelligence would surpass human intelligence and embark on a path of accelerating self-enhancement. These ideas, which once seemed like science fiction, are now viewed as mainstream by many technologists. Beyond Imagination is co-founded by scientist, entrepreneur and filmmaker Harry Kloor. The company has developed a humanoid robotthe Beyond Botand accompanying AI models that it intends to deploy in industrial settings such as factories, pharmaceutical plants and chip manufacturing facilities, said Gauntlet Ventures co-founder Oliver Carmack. The company has been testing its robots and is now looking for large enterprises into which they can be deployed, Carmack said, adding that he chose to back Beyond Imagination because of its potential to revolutionize U.S. manufacturing and address the projected global shortage of skilled labor. Major tech companies including Nvidia, Meta Platforms and Tesla, alongside various startups, are rushing to make humanoid robots, and are betting that recent advances in AI will also lead to breakthroughs in robots and automation. In October last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that “a lot of progress” has been made with its humanoid robot, Optimus, which could perform many daily tasks. Progress on robots has been slow, however, as researchers have found that the language-related AI breakthroughs driving chatbot development have not necessarily helped with understanding of the physical world. Many companies are spending enormous sums to collect the real-world training data necessary to train models that can power robots. In addition to humanoid robots, Beyond Imagination is also developing Aura, which co-founder Kloor described as a universal operating system for intelligent manufacturing, allowing humans, robots and legacy machines to work together. Beyond Imagination has attracted an eclectic roster of advisers, including former Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, and onetime Paramount Pictures chairman Jim Gianopulos. Dawn Chmielewski and Anna Tong, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Women may be at a heightened risk for being edged out of their job (or having their duties change) due to AI. According to a new study, jobs disproportionately done by women, especially in higher income countries, are more steadily becoming automated. The joint study, which comes from the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) and Polands National Research Institute (NASK), was released today. It assessed the ways in which generative AI is reshaping the world, as well as how it changes the role of human beings. We went beyond theory to build a tool grounded in real-world jobs. By combining human insight, expert review, and generative AI models, weve created a replicable method that helps countries assess risk and respond with precision, said Pawel Gmyrek, ILO senior researcher and lead author, in a statement included in the study. How AI is changing jobs The report found that globally about one in four people have a job with generative AI exposure, meaning their jobs had the potential to be performed by AI. Researchers also found a significant contrast between how at-risk women’s jobs were versus men’s. They found that the jobs that had the greatest risk of being performed by AI made up 9.6% of female employment compared to just 3.5% of jobs typically held by men. Administrative tasks, most commonly performed in clerical jobs, were at the greatest risk, but jobs in media, software, and finance were also at notable risk, as well. The researchers noted that rather than AI taking over employees’ jobs completely, human roles will, more commonly, evolve with the technology. We stress that such exposure does not imply the immediate automation of an entire occupation, but rather the potential for a large share of its current tasks to be performed using this technology, the report explained. Shaping the future of work The study’s authors also noted that governments, social dialogue, and worker organizations will be important in determining AI’s growing impact on the workforce in the future. This index helps identify where GenAI is likely to have the biggest impact, so countries can better prepare and protect workers,” said Marek Troszyński, one of the researchers and a senior expert at NASK. Still, when it comes to women’s work, it’s not the first bad news about the impact of AI. A 2025 report from the World Economic Forum and LinkedIn found that AI is making the gender gap worse. It showed that women are currently in fewer roles being augmented by AI, and more in those disrupted by the technology. Currently 33.7% of women work in occupations that are being disrupted, compared to just 25.5% of men.
Category:
E-Commerce
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